Bob Hawkings: Tales from a local journalist

We are driving up an unpaved path in the dark to Bob’s block in the bush. It’s the night after our presentation to the Cygnet community and Liz has arranged for us to camp on his property. It’s quite dark and there are a couple of steep sections to navigate. When we finally get up to his place, Bob guides Steve so he can carefully reverse onto a patch of flat dirt. It’s a bit of tight spot and Steve lets out a sigh of relief when he finally switches off the engine.

Bob invites us into his home for a drink and a chat. Liz has also followed us up. We have only just met Bob and we are touched by his hospitality, something we seem to constantly encounter on our travels. We walk into a beautifully constructed architect designed home that is mostly wood. It has a wonderful homely welcoming feel and we relax over drinks and nibbles, glad the presentation was well received and well attended.

The conversation flows around the table, from local politics and a world without growth to clear felling Tasmanian forests. We are clearly on the same wavelength in terms of our ideology. The next morning we wake up early and discover the beautiful views from Bob’s hilltop home. There’s the WOOFer’s shed that is almost complete and is Bob’s insurance plan for when he is older and not able to manage the property on his own. A few large rainwater tanks are scattered around the property that is off-grid in terms of water and a rather large vegie and fruit garden has been recently enclosed to protect the produce from the possums who have had more than their fair share in the past.

Over breakfast Bob shares stories from his life after first extracting a promise we will play a few games of table tennis before we leave!

Bob was born in Shropshire and is proud to be a graduate from the University of Life. He recalls that his mates were all getting jobs when he was in his late teens. With no ambition to go to university, he was lucky to land a cadetship as a journalist in a local newspaper. He laughs when he says he was drunk for four years so he could learn the ropes from the more experienced journalists who spent their free time at the local pub.

In 1959 he left the UK. He remembers the excitement of that first voyage when after joining the National Service he was posted to Singapore. The seaports along the way — places like Bombay and stops in Malaysia — were an education and he still remembers the hustle and bustle of the Colombo markets. In 1961, a friendly brigadier wrote a letter that enabled him to be locally demobilized and he came to Adelaide on an indulgence passage as a10 shilling POM — much cheaper than the 10-pound POMs!

He visited friends in Melbourne and came to Sydney, obsessed with seeing the Sydney Harbour bridge. He landed a job with Rupert Murdoch working for the Cumberland Newspapers at 25 pounds a week, a great wage at the time. But Bob was restless and left Australia to work for a small paper in Papua New Guinea. The next decade saw him working in the Pacific and then East Asia as a journalist and then as a diplomatic representative before he finally came back home to Australia. He became a citizen a few years later.

Over coffee and toast the next morning in Bob’s homely kitchen, he reflects that he has had an incredibly charmed life, given that he was born in a Council house and a working class suburb in England. Bob has written for many leading journals and papers around the world but now in his late seventies, he enjoys the solitude of his life as a local journalist writing for the Tasmanian Times.

My eye catches the wall full of photographs behind him. While chatting we realize that he was friends with a couple of our Hornsby neighbours, who spontaneously bought a property in the Cygnet area a few years ago while on holiday. While I only knew them by sight, my friend Helen was good friends with them and had visited twice. What a small world!

We’ve had a wonderful visit and finish our morning with a few games of table tennis in the adjacent garage. We are evenly matched if a little bit rusty but its good fun and another spontaneous friendship on the road less travelled has been born. But there’s one more thing to do before we leave. Bob insists we leave with a punnet of fresh juicy blueberries from his garden, and happily I help pick a container full. It will be a wonderful addition to my muesli, yogurt and honey each morning. Thank you for your hospitality Bob!

First published by www.polisplan.com.au on 19 February 2016